More than ever before, given today’s open access to information, organisational brands have to be authentic. What they are inside has to reflect what they stand for outside.
As customers lose trust in institutions of all sorts, they are more inclined to ask whether the organisations to which they give their business share their values.
And the people who work in those organisations are more attuned to gaps between their personal values and what they perceive are the values of the organisation.
The public looks to government and regulation to bring rogue businesses into line, but the reality is that it is values that will make the difference.
Values are at the heart of organisational branding. Yet few organisations truly understand what are their real values. Not the values that appear in the website but the values that are experienced daily by the people who work in the business. The values that are evident from the behaviour of the leadership.
Enter the Barrett Values Centre. Since he wrote his seminal book ‘Liberating the corporate soul’ (terrible title, good read), Richard Barrett and team have been tireless advocates for values driven organisations. And they have developed a very neat survey tool (Cultural Transformation Tools or CTT for short) for measuring values.
CTT compares the personal values of the workforce, with actual current values of the organisation and the potential values required to compete successfully in the future. The resulting information is frequently absorbing.
CTT puts hard data at the centre of what is too often regarded as a ‘soft issue’.
To give people a taste for the tool, Barrett Values Centre have just introduced the Personal Values Assessment (PVA). This helps you decide what are your core values and what they mean for you – takes just 10-15 minutes. It can tell you something about CTT and a lot about yourself.
Geoff Dodds, Brand consultant and coach